since it is surely an easy thing for him who pillages my thoughts _ad
libitum_ to reproduce a perfect resemblance in his own: [3] but what
has become of the second, viz., not the teaching, but the operative
working of Christianity? The ethical system is replaced by a stolen
system; but what replaces the mysterious _agencies_ of the Christian
faith? In Essenism we find again a saintly scheme of ethics; but where
is the scheme of mediation?

In the Roman church, there have been some theologians who have also
seen reason to suspect the romance of "Essenismus." And I am not sure
that the knowledge of this fact may not have operated to blunt the
suspicions of the Protestant churches. I do not mean that such a fact
would have absolutely deafened Protestant ears to the grounds of
suspicion when loudly proclaimed; but it is very likely to have
indisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquainted
with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between _them_ and
my own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulent
purpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement--which
builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such as
could not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles.
I, on the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting incompatibility
of such a sect with the absence of all attention to it in the New
Testament, but (which is far more important) the incompatibility of
such a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality and
heavenly revelation of Christianity. Here is my first point of
difference from the Romish objectors. The second is this: not content
with exposing the imposture, I go on, and attempt to show in what real
circumstances, fraudulently disguised, it might naturally have arisen.
In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when struggling
with _Jewish_ persecution at some period of the generation between the